Monday, March 20, 2017

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I’ve lived with the guilt for forty years. I still wake up in the middle of the night in a sweat, thinking about it.

I was the person that ran into you on my bicycle in the park at two forty-seven on the afternoon of August the sixth 1977. I sent you flying backwards into the middle of a family’s picnic splattering them with sticky trifle and cream cakes. I veered into a rose bush and went head-first into the pond splashing a torrent of dirty water all over you and the picnickers. I startled a swan which leapt out of the pond flapping its wings knocking you senseless. The children started screaming, the father cursed and the mother burst into tears. I dragged my bike out of the water and rode off as fast as I could.

Too funny! He has lived with that gilt for a long time! I'm sure the family would have great laughs about the incident in retrospect when they get together for a picnic. I once attended a picnic where the whole picnic table was off balance and fell over, with all the food falling on us, it was indeed a mess, and so much good food went to waste. We left hungry :-(